Australian news, and some related international items

Bass Coast Shire Councillors have resolved that climate change poses a serious threat and should be treated as an emergency.

A motion was carried at last Wednesday’s Ordinary Council Meeting and will see Council develop a Bass Coast Climate Change Action Plan 2020-30, to set out how Bass Coast Shire can more effectively contribute to climate change mitigation and be more resilient and well adapted to the effects of a changing climate.

It will also include a target of zero net emissions by 2030 across Council operations as well as the wider community.

Australian Associated Press, 14 August 2019 The Victorian parliament is set to explore lifting the state’s bans on nuclear activities in an effort to tackle climate change.

A Liberal Democrats motion for an inquiry into the potential for nuclear power passed the state’s upper house on Wednesday.

The 12-month inquiry will explore if nuclear energy would be feasible and suitable for Victoria in the future, and will consider waste management, health and safety and possible industrial and medical applications.

Liberal Democrat MP David Limbrick said the political climate – and actual climate – have changed significantly since nuclear energy was last seriously considered in the 1980s.

“The young people of today no longer fear nuclear holocaust. Today’s young have a new fear – global warming,” he told the Legislative Council…….

The Greens’ Tim Read said it makes “absolutely no sense” for Victoria to consider getting into nuclear energy.

“This inquiry is a waste of resources and a waste of time,” he said in a statement.

“Dredging up the tired old debate on nuclear will only delay the urgent work needed to end our reliance on coal and gas and transitioning to clean and safe renewable energy.”

By Rhiannon Tuffield 20 July 19, A solar farm in northern Victoria will soon generate enough electricity to power Melbourne’s entire tram network.

The 128-megawatt solar farm near Numurkah, north of Shepparton, took less than a year to build and will use more than 300,000 panels to power the city’s trams.

Key points:

Melbourne’s tram network is set to be powered by the state’s largest solar farm

The solar facility sits on 500 hectares of land once used for grazing cattle

More than 300,000 panels will put 255,000 megawatt hours of electricity into the national power grid annually

It is one of two solar farms supplying renewable energy to the network, and will generate approximately 255,000 megawatt hours of electricity into the national grid each year.

Victorian Minister for Energy Lily D’Ambrosio said the project was the largest in the state.

“The Numurkah solar farm will play an important role in supporting the transformation of our energy system towards clean, renewable energy and reaching our renewable energy target,” Ms D’Ambrosio said.

Farm built in record time

Based just outside of Numurkah in the tiny town of Drumanure, the farm spans 500 hectares of land once used for cattle grazing and cropping.

Rising sea, erosion to wreak havoc in low-lying suburbs: report, The Age , By Benjamin Preiss and Adam Carey

June 23, 2019, Rising seas are threatening to encroach on low-lying parts of Melbourne within 20 years, causing flooding and erosion in suburbs including St Kilda, Point Cook, Mordialloc, Seaford and Frankston.

Other places at risk include areas around Queenscliff and Barwon Heads on the Bellarine Peninsula; the south-west Victorian towns of Port Fairy and Portland; and Tooradin, Lang Lang and Seaspray in the state’s south-east.

A report tabled in Victoria’s Parliament last week examines the myriad threats to the state’s fragile coastline, painting an alarming picture of damage to the environment and suburban Melbourne if no action is taken.

The Victorian Environmental Assessment Council report cites a 20-centimetre sea-level rise by 2040 and between 40 centimetres and one metre by century’s end.

Sea-level rise will lead to more frequent inundation of low-lying areas, loss of coastal habitat, cliff, beach and foreshore erosion,” the report says.

“Climate change will also put pressure on ageing coastal infrastructure and ultimately impact on feasibility of living in or developing some coastal locations.”

Increasing storm intensity, coupled with rising seas, will cause extensive erosion of the Victorian coastline by 2040, the report says.

“The most extensive area vulnerable to erosion by 2040 is the Gippsland coast,” it says. “Other coasts at risk include west of Portland, beaches in Port Phillip Bay between Mordialloc and Frankston, and the coast between Cape Paterson and Cape Liptrap in South Gippsland.”

Victoria bushfires: Major blazes still out of control as residents may be allowed to return home

By 9News Staff, 6:03am Mar 5, 2019 Five of the 29 bushfires burning in Victoria this morning are still out of control this morning stretching across 59,000 hectares of land.

A cooler weather change that is moving over the state has seen yesterday’s ‘Emergency’ warning zones downgraded to a ‘Watch and Act’ level, however authorities have warned that four major fires are still out of control.

Fires rip through Victoria: ‘worse than Black Saturday’,A fire, which has destroyed properties and more than 10,000 hectares of land is burning in the same area as the deadly Black Saturday bushfires. Bushfires have ripped through Victoria’s east, with a wind change challenging firefighters working all night to contain the blaze. SBS News 4 Mar 19

Despite cooler conditions expected on Monday, firefighters may have to contend with dry lightning, which could start more fires.

The Bunyip State Park fire, burning 65km east of Melbourne, was sparked by lightning strikes on Friday and has destroyed more than 10,000 hectares.

The blaze is still racing towards the Princes Freeway and emergency warnings remain in place for the surrounding area.

“The risk of lightning redevelops in the late morning with the chance of some showers and thunderstorms,” Bureau of Meteorology’s senior forecaster Christie Johnson said.

While there was a chance of showers, it was hard to pinpoint where they would hit, and there would only be a few millimetres of rainfall, she said…..

Why Victoria’s bushfires generated their own lightning, The Age , By Liam Mannix, March 4, 2019 —There are few sights more terrifying for a firefighter: a vast, dark storm cloud brewing above a bushfire, shooting out lightning.

On Sunday, the Licola bushfire east of Melbourne burned with such intensity it generated a huge thundercloud that fired hundreds of lightning strikes at nearby forests.

The Bunyip fire, which is believed to have wiped at least one town off the map, also generated its own weather system which fed the fire with extreme winds.

“It’s absolutely terrifying. And it’s dangerous as well, because that lightning can start new fires before the main fire,” says Dean Narramore, a meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology’s extreme weather desk.

How bushfires generate their own weather

As a bushfire burns, it generates hot, smoke-filled air.

This air is hotter than surrounding air and rapidly rises, forming a smoke plume.

As the plume rises, atmospheric pressure falls. This causes the plume to spread out, generating a “mushroom” on top of the plume.

The smoke plume is filled with moisture which is released by burning trees. The higher you go in the atmosphere, the cooler it gets, so the top parts of the plume get chilled.

This causes the moisture in the plume to condense (turn from water vapour into tiny water droplets) and form a cloud.

As the plume rises rapidly into the sky, cool air is sucked in to replace it. This causes extreme winds near the firefront. To fight a fire, you need to know which way it is burning. But when a fire-cloud forms and starts generating strong and unpredictable winds, the fire can become chaotic.

Queensland floods: Townsville reels under record water levels as more rain arrives, There are several more days to go in this flood event, Bureau of Meteorology warns, Guardian, 2 Feb 2019,

Queensland authorities have said the state’s north was entering “unprecedented territory” as monsoon rains battered the city of Townsville, setting record flood levels and destroying homes.

……..The worst of the conditions were expected over the next two days, and authorities described the next 48 hours as “crucial”. On Friday, Palaszczuk had described the incoming monsoon as a “once in a 100-year” event and Townsville was declared a disaster zone.

……..Schools and businesses in Townsville were to remain shut and thousands of residents had been evacuated to higher ground, AAP reported.

Bushfires threaten homes across Victoria , The Age, By Nicole Precel, 3 February 2019,Out-of-control bushfires threatened homes and lives on Sunday as more than 1000 firefighters battled major blazes across Victoria.Firefighters were stretched to the limit, fighting several large fires throughout the state.

A fire in Hepburn, in central Victoria was the major focus for the day with residents warned at daybreak to evacuate the town.

Two firefighters who were fighting the Hepburn fires were treated for heat exhaustion and over-exertion and were taken to hospital as a precaution.

Elsewhere, as almost 50 new fires sparked, emergency warnings were issued at various times for fires including days-old blazes in Timbarra in Gippsland and Grantville on the Bass Coast……..

As of Sunday afternoon, there were 69 aircraft working “very, very hard” and “effectively”.

The fires were fanned by soaring temperatures, hitting 43.3 degrees in the Mallee, 43.1 degrees in Hopetoun, 42.2 in Mildura, 41.1 at Melbourne Airport and 38.2 in Melbourne’s CBD.

For weeks, bushfires have been ravaging Tasmania. Amost every day more warnings spring up, new areas are on alert.

It’s easy to get warning fatigue, and, with only a handful or properties impacted so far, dismiss the fires as all bark and no bite.

But satellite images reveal the scale of the destruction so far.

The Gell River blaze, in the state’s south-west, was the first to start, ignited by a dry lightning strike in late December.

“It seems really like ancient history,” professor of pyrogeography and fire service at the University of Tasmania David Bowman said.

“It started at the end of last year and escalated in early January, so we’re looking at a fire situation that’s now gone for a full calendar month.”

Images taken by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellite on January 3 show what seems, relative to the lakes around it, like a small blackened patch of wilderness……..

“There are multiple major fire events occurring simultaneously, which is extremely challenging for firefighters and fire managers because of the requirement to spread resources and make very difficult prioritising decisions.” …….

Great Ocean Road at risk from surging sea , Canberra Times, By Royce Millar, 10 January 2019Key sections of the Great Ocean Road are at risk of being washed away, raising safety fears and calls for the Andrews government to reroute parts of the world-recognised tourist road.

New studies of dramatic beach erosion around Apollo Bay over the last two years highlight the mounting problem of erosion, flooding and sea level rise along Victoria’s coast.

In a report to the State government released exclusively to The Age, leading coastal geomorphologist Neville Rosengren and engineer Tony Miner recommend urgent action to protect the foreshore of Mounts Bay next to Apollo Bay, after major erosion there in 2017.

They warn the national heritage-listed road could be “compromised” within five years.

A second report on erosion at Apollo Bay by engineers GHD also recommends the eventual “realignment” of the road outside township areas at Apollo Bay. It notes that five metres of erosion at Apollo Bay beach during a June 2018 storm put the road “at risk”.

The studies point to erosion at critical levels at the very time the state’s south-west is hosting ever greater numbers of visitors, now more than five million a year.

Similar problems are being faced along the wider coast, from Port Fairy in the south-west to Inverloch and the Ninety Mile Beach and Lakes Entrance in the south-east and east……..

findings raise the prospect that rising seas due to climate change are now proving a real problem for vulnerable coastal locations.

Mr Rosengren said rising sea levels contributed to the erosion at Mounts Bay.

“You’re witnessing the effects of a complex of processes of which sea level is one,” he said.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) current projection for sea level rise, based on high emissions, ‘business-as-usual’ scenario, is almost 90 centimetres by the year 2100, relative to an average sea level for the period 1986-2005.

That projection will be updated, most likely upwards, in the IPCC’s special oceans report due for release this year.

Other peer-reviewed studies have forecast a much steeper rise in sea level by 2100.

……… While possible, realignment of the road would be difficult and expensive at Mounts Bay because the Barham River runs along the landward side of the road, making the area also susceptible to flooding.

…….. A quandary for all concerned is that sea walls of any form will alter the character of a coastline renowned for its rugged, natural beauty. Sea walls also interfere with the coast’s ecology and its ability to naturally replenish itself.

Bankrolled by public donations, the 243-kilometre Great Ocean Road was built by World War I veterans between 1919 and 1932 as a memorial to soldiers killed in the war, and to open the south-west coast to tourists and daytrippers. It was built as close to the ocean as possible.

……… A Victorian Department of Environment Land Water and Planning spokesperson said accounting for sea level rise was now “embedded” in the Victorian planning system.

Bushfires across Victoria could burn for weeks, The Age, By Rachael Dexter, Liam Mannix, Rachel Wells & Simone Fox Koob, 5 January 2019, Firefighters will use a brief reprieve from the hot weather to try to get on top of a major bushfire in Gippsland – before temperatures start to rise again.

The bushfire at Rosedale, suspected to be deliberately lit, ripped through more than 10,000 hectares of scrub and forest before it was brought under control about 2.30am Saturday.

After a cool change following one of the hottest days in years on Friday, the mercury is forecast to rise to 31 degrees on Tuesday. Another cool front will bring relief Wednesday and Thursday with temperatures of 23 and 25 degrees.

But the fire, which is burning through a state park and pine plantation, could take weeks to extinguish. Gippsland will get a week of cool weather, before the temperature starts to get into the 30s next weekend. Firefighters hope to have it well under control by then. ……..

Public works: Royal Nuclear Show, THE AUSTRALIAN, By BRONWYN WATSON, DECEMBER 7, 2018

“……….Screen-printing workshops across the country, such as Redback Graphix, Earthworks Poster Collective and the Tin Sheds, created posters that adorned cafes, telephone poles, university campuses, libraries and virtually any public space. They had slogans such as No Nukes No Tests, No More Hiroshimas, and End Uranium Mining. At the time, perception of a nuclear future was seen as progressive and positive, with governments and industry trying to promote nuclear experimentation as necessary to the nation’s security and beneficial to humanity.

One artist who emphasised these issues in her poster prints was Toni Robertson, whose work, The Royal Nuclear Show — 3, is on show at the Burrinja Dandenong Ranges Cultural Centre in Upwey, Victoria. Produced while Robertson was an artist-in-residence at the Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide in 1981, it depicts a dystopian post-nuclear carnival where crowds wander past a billboard with a baby sleeping and sucking a bottle. On the baby’s pillow is written Bomblet. The billboard reads: “Meet the nuclear family, Bomblet the baby nuke. He’s so like his dad! This little boy was conceived as a low yield, tactical weapon for use in limited theatre war.” “Little boy” was the name given to the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

ABORIGINAL CULTURE AND COUNTRY
5.2.1.1 SELF DETERMINATION
Labor supports the development of a treaty with our first nation’s people. Labor will: * resource and support the Victorian Treaty Advancement Commission to develop a representative structure to negotiate the terms of a Treaty with Victoria; * support the representative structure to negotiate a treaty; * work with Aboriginal Victorians to determine a process that reports against a set of key indicators and monitors government efforts to improve outcomes across the Victorian Aboriginal Community:

5.2.1.2 LAND RIGHTS AND CULTURAL HERITAGE Labor acknowledges and supports traditional owners and their connection to land, culture and heritage. Labor will develop and lead a policy reform that provides self-determined land-based initiatives, aimed at providing economic development and employment opportunities and reaffirming the access and development rights of traditional owners of the land estate of Aboriginal Victorians. Labor will: * accelerate the negotiation and resolution of outstanding Traditional Owner Settlement claims; * investigate the application of a revenue scheme for traditional owner groups, incorporating best practice from other models and jurisdictions; * work with Traditional Owners as equal partners in the management of public lands and natural resources, planning and management; * ensure that Caring for Country will become embedded as the best practice approach to land and sea management in Victoria; * support Victorian Aboriginal landholders to map their cultural heritage includingintangible cultural heritage; * acknowledge, recognise and remember our Aboriginal legacy and history in partnership with Aboriginal Victorians and follow appropriate protocols to create lasting memorials and markers that recognise and contribute to Reconciliation with the legacy of the past; * continue and expand the practice of having Traditional Owner Country plaques/signs at geographic markers at government boundaries or Traditional Owner boundaries; * roll out State-wide initiatives across cemeteries to ensure culturally appropriate resting places; * work with relevant Aboriginal groups and individuals to establish codes of conduct that ensure consent of Aboriginal Victorians is obtained when collecting and using Indigenous information for research; and * promote and resource Victorian Aboriginal Languages Week.

POLICY IN ACTIONCONSULTATION WITH ABORIGINAL VICTORIANS ON TREATY
The Victorian Treaty Advancement Commission will continue to lead engagement on the treaty process and the development of the Aboriginal Representative Body with the Aboriginal Community. Aboriginal Elders and Traditional Owners are being supported to engage further on the state’s Treaty process through Treaty Circle Grants that will fund smaller consultations or ‘Treaty Circles’ on key matters relating to Treaty, while Treaty Engagement Grants that will support deeper, ongoing consultation, as well as strategic planning and research in the areas of self-determination and Treaty.

7.6.8 COMMUNITY AND INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE IN ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENTIndigenous people and informed landholders often have valuable wisdom and knowledge to share about their local environment that may also assist with scientific research and policy making.

7.10.4 RECOGNISING ABORIGINAL VALUES OF WATER
Water for Victoria has given a clear roadmap to deliver water for Aboriginal cultural, spiritual and economic values. Labor will: support Aboriginal communities to access water and achieve economic development outcomes; and build capacity to increase Aboriginal participation in water management and use.

FEDERALSubmissions about the proposed National Radioactive Waste Management Facility in Kimba or the Flinders Ranges. The Standing Committee on Environment and Energy are accepting submissions to the ‘Inquiry into the prerequisites for nuclear energy in Australia’ until 16 September 2019. Please write your own submission or use FOE’s online proforma.

Nuclear facilities, including power stations and radioactive waste dumps, are now banned in Queensland.

Nuclear facilities banned under the Act include:

·nuclear reactors (whether used to generate electricity or not);

·uranium conversion and enrichment plants;

·nuclear fuel fabrication plants;

·spent fuel processing plants; and

·facilities used to store or dispose of material associated with the nuclear fuel cycle e.g. radioactive waste material.

Exemptions under the legislation include facilities for the storage or disposal of waste material resulting from research or medical purposes, and the operation of a nuclear-powered vessel.

1 FEDERALSubmissions about the proposed National Radioactive Waste Management Facility in Kimba or the Flinders Ranges. The Standing Committee on Environment and Energy are accepting submissions to the ‘Inquiry into the prerequisites for nuclear energy in Australia’ until 16 September 2019. Please write your own submission or use FOE’s online proforma.

Australia has long rejected nuclear power, and it is banned in Federal and State laws. The nuclear lobby is out to first repeal those laws, and then to get the Australian government to commit to buying probably large numbers of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) . This could mean first importing plutonium and/or enriched uranium, as some reactor models, (thorium ones) require these to get the fission process started. That would, in effect, mean importing nuclear wastes.

There’s an all-too short period for people to send in Submissions to the 4 Parliamentary Inquiries now in progress.